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Editor’s Note: This article is part of a short series on creating resilient cities, sponsored by Siemens. Please join us for a live Google Hangout with Siemens and Arup on October 1, where we’ll talk about this issue live! RSVP here.

As a coastal city with an inland water supply, New York City faces a unique set of challenges for climate change resiliency in a future marked by frequent, destructive coastal storms and rising sea levels.

In terms of clean water supply, New York has one advantage thanks to resiliency planning that dates back to the early 19th century. At that time, urban sprawl, commerce and industry quickly overwhelmed Manhattan's patchwork of privately-owned wells after the Revolutionary War.

Rather than continuing to dig wells within the city, planners developed a system of reservoirs far inland at higher elevations, some as far as 125 miles away, relying almost exclusively on gravity-powered aqueducts and water tunnels. The incorporation of Queens, the Bronx, Brooklyn and Staten Island into New York City was impelled partly by Manhattan's lock on reliable, expandable inland water resources, as groundwater in those boroughs proved inadequate to sustain population growth. Only one group of public wells continued to serve part of Queens until 2007, when they, too, were finally put out of service.

The city's wastewater resiliency, however, is a different story.

The wastewater treatment resiliency problem

New York's 14 wastewater treatment plants present two different kinds of problems for climate change resiliency.

The first problem is their vulnerable location: Unlike the city's reservoirs, they are located much closer to sea level, and they are all within the city's borders. In addition, as is is typical with wastewater treatment plants, they are also located alongside or very near the city's waterways, including rivers, creeks and bays.

One of the plants is even located entirely on a waterway. The North River treatment plant was built on a platform in the Hudson River, adjacent to the shoreline of upper Manhattan.

The second problem is mechanical: Again in contrast to the city's reservoir-based, gravity-powered water supply system, wastewater treatment plants are massive, energy-sucking machines characterized by enormous engines and pumps along with tanks, digesters and other infrastructure.

After Sandy: Climate change resiliency in New York City

Hurricane Sandy devastated parts of New York City in 2012, causing an estimated $100 million in damage to the the city's wastewater facilities. It affected 10 of the 14 treatment plants and 42 out of 96 wastewater pumping stations.

In the context of climate change resiliency, an analysis estimated that more than $1 billion in wastewater equipment and infrastructure would be at risk from future destructive storms.

With that in mind, the city's Department of Environmental Protection, which administers the water supply and wastewater systems, assessed the city's wastewater vulnerability and issued a series of recommendations in a 2013 report titled The NYC Wastewater Resiliency Plan.

Billed as "the nation’s most detailed and comprehensive assessment of the risk climate change poses to a wastewater collection and treatment system," the plan was actually initiated before Sandy, in 2011. It includes an analysis of 58 wastewater pumping stations along with all 14 treatment plants.

As a cost-based analysis, the report makes a clear case that potential damage to the city's wastewater assets could top $2 billion over the next 50 years from a series of coastal floods precipitated by rising sea levels, unless steps are taken to protect the facilities.

The report calculates an up-front investment of about $315 million in infrastructure upgrades with the aim of minimizing damage and preventing service disruptions during storms and coastal floods.

The upgrades consist of a variety of strategies, including elevating and waterproofing critical equipment and infrastructure, installing flood gates and dikes, and replacing conventional pumps with submersible pumps.

These infrastructure-centric mitigation measures also dovetail with the city's broader A Stronger, More Resilient New York initiative, which calls for restoring protective wetlands along with creating engineered barriers.

A toolkit for climate resiliency

The city's wastewater resiliency planning also dovetails with the resiliency report developed by Siemens.

As New York's experience with Sandy shows, every city faces a unique set of circumstances, but there are many areas of commonality.

Aptly titled Toolkit for Resilient Cities, the report covers systems for energy, transportation, water supply and buildings. As Siemens proposes, focusing on these critical systems ensures a firm platform for other services -- including public health related services such as sanitation, emergency response and food supply, as well as fuel supply.

As clearly stated in the Toolkit, Siemens recognizes the 'new normal' of climate change and its related impacts:

Resilience is the ability of people, organizations or systems to prepare for, respond, recover from and thrive in the face of hazards. The goal is to ensure the continuity and advancement of economic prosperity, business success, environmental quality and human well-being, despite external threats.

As a technology company, Siemens' emphasis is on the use of microgrids with updated monitoring and control features, to build more resilient IT systems and ensure that the widespread failures characteristic of today's storm-related impacts are a thing of the past.

Siemens makes clear, though, that IT is only part of the solution. Infrastructure actions like the NYC Wastewater Resiliency Plan are also critical.

Even more critical is a change in the nature of our civil discourse. While not necessarily referring to the anti-renewable energy, anti-Agenda 21 paranoia expressed by certain pundits and politicians, the Toolkit makes it clear that we can't simply engineer our way into a sustainable response to climate change:

Changing social, political and economic conventions is as fundamental to the success of city resilience initiatives as is upgrading physical assets. Implementation of technology solutions often requires a broader ‘enabling’ toolkit, which includes changes to urban planning, policy and regulation; governance; knowledge development; and financing models.

The good news is: The climate denial noise is finally being overwhelmed by a more reality-based approach, and we'll hear more about that as the United Nations General Assembly meets in New York City this week.

Image (cropped): Courtesy of NYC DEP

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When your pooled assets add up to more than $600 billion, people tend to pay attention when you write them a letter about sustainable palm oil. That seems to be the case in Friday's announcement by five major palm oil producers, which pledged to self-impose an immediate moratorium on clearing high carbon stock forests.

The announcement came a week after four of the companies received a letter from a group of investors spearheaded by Green Century Capital Management, with collective assets topping the aforementioned $600 billion. In addition to calling for the moratorium, the Green Century letter urged the producers to adopt more sustainable palm oil practices, in accordance with a growing number of industry stakeholders.

Unfortunately, that's where things could get sticky.

Green Century Capital Management writes a letter...

Green Century's sustainable palm oil letter, dated Sept. 8, was addressed to four of the five palm oil producers: Sime Darby, Asian Agri, IOI Corp. and Kuala Lumpur Kepong. (We'll get to the fifth, Musim Mas, in a minute.)

The letter cuts straight to the mustard: It starts off by noting that major stakeholders, including Wilmar, Golden Agri-Resources, Nestle and Unilever, have already pledged to establish traceable systems to ensure that their supply chain does not begin with the development of  High Carbon Stock (HCS) or High Conservation Value (HCV) forests, as well as peatlands.

With the major suppliers Wilmar and Golden Agri-Resources already responding to increased demand for sustainable palm oil by staking out a "first mover" supply chain advantage, the holdouts risk losing a huge chunk of business.

The letter includes a list of actions for reducing environmental impacts and ending human rights abuses in conventional palm oil operations, specifically referencing Kuala Lumpur Kepong. It calls upon the producers to:

...adopt an immediate moratorium on clearance of any potential HCS areas and peat land areas, and to adopt a time-bound plan by which all palm oil supplied by KLK and its third-party contractors will be traceable back to plantations that meet the above criteria for protecting forests, peatlands, and human rights.

Notably, the letter points out that publicity over both environmental and human rights abuses in the palm oil industry have created "significant brand and reputational risks" for industry stakeholders and their shareholders.

Along with Unilever and Nestle, the letter also cites Procter & Gamble and Colgate-Palmolive for signing on to the sustainable palm oil movement.

...which gets results...sort of...

We're not saying there's a direct cause-and-effect here, but it is true that just a few business days after the letter was issued, all four of the recipients -- as well as a fifth producer, Musim Mas -- jointly announced that they would adopt an immediate moratorium on HCS clearing (a link to the copyrighted announcement is available on Sime Darby's website).

The moratorium will be in effect while a yearlong industry-funded study is underway, which aims to provide a standard of definition for HCS forests.

That's not quite as simple as it sounds. The sustainability risk analysis company Chain Reaction Research points out that the five growers were previously behind a somewhat notorious greenwashing exercise called the "Sustainable Palm Oil Manifesto," which allowed HCS clearing.

Chain Reaction also notes that the public statement issued by the group does not specify what the moratorium would actually cover, in terms of defining HCS areas until the study is concluded. The statement is also thin on compliance methodology -- although Asian Agri has stated that it will use the HCS developed by the Forest Trust, Golden AgriRsources and Greenpeace until the study is concluded.

Although cheered by the joint announcement, Green Century has also taken a we'll-believe-it-when-we-see-it-approach.

Momentum builds for sustainable palm oil

On the other hand, Green Century has a much stronger hand to deal compared to just a few months ago. On Dec. 13 of last year, Green Century issued a similar sustainable palm oil letter to leading palm oil producers and stakeholders when it only represented $270 billion in assets.

The recipients included Wilmar, which now appears to be firmly in the sustainable palm oil camp.

It certainly doesn't hurt that sales of sustainable palm oil are surging in response to increased demand. That includes new and recent pledges from major U.S. customers like Starbucks, Dr. Bronner's, Dunkin' Donuts and Mars among others.

It's also worth noting that palm oil is just one of  Green Century's green initiatives, fracking disclosure being another topic of concern.

Like they say, money talks...

Image credit (cropped): Lip Kee via flickr.com, cc license

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Wind energy has famously pitted environmentalists against each other – renewable energy and climate action advocates vs. wildlife conservationists concerned about wind turbines injuring or killing birds. But a new study, funded by the American Wind Wildlife Institute (AWWI), reveals that bird fatalities resulting from collisions with wind turbines are extremely low; in fact, cell towers and cats kill a far greater number of birds than wind turbines do, the peer-reviewed report found.

Wind turbines are responsible for an estimated 214,000 to 368,000 bird deaths each year, according to A Comprehensive Analysis of Small-passerine Fatalities from Collision with Wind Turbines at Wind Energy Facilities. This is a small fraction of bird fatalities compared with the 6.8 million annual deaths caused by collisions with cell and radio towers and the 1.4 to 3.7 billion fatalities from cats, say the report’s authors, environmental consulting firm West, Douglas Johnson from the U.S. Geological Survey and Joelle Gehring of the Federal Communications Commission.

The report, which focuses on passerines (small birds such as songbirds), is the most comprehensive study of the impacts of wind turbines on small bird populations, said Taber Allison, AWWI director of research and evaluation, in a statement.

“While total fatality numbers inform the scale of the issue, one of the most important scientific contributions from this research is our new understanding  of the level of impact on individual songbird and other small passerine species,” said the study’s lead author, Wallace Erickson of West, in a statement. “Using conservative assumptions, we estimate that on an annual basis, less than 0.1 percent (and typically less than 0.01 percent) of songbird and other small passerine species populations in North America perish from collisions with turbines.”

Erickson and his co-authors analyzed data from 116 studies conducted at more than 70 wind energy facilities in the United States and Canada, adjusting for the fact that not all birds killed by wind turbines can be detected during surveys: Some bird carcasses may be scavenged or will decompose before they are counted, while others may be missed by surveyors.

The study’s conclusion? That wildlife advocates should continue to push for bird-friendly locations for wind turbines, but they should also focus on the numerous other “threats that are far more serious in terms of their effect on the populations of these birds,” Taber said.

Climate change is one such threat. The AWWI pointed out that the National Audubon Society has just completed a report for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, finding that climate change puts more than half of all bird species in North America at risk. Of the 588 bird species Audubon studied, 314 species are projected to lose more than 50 percent of their current climatic range by 2080.

Audubon spokesman David Ringer told USA Today that the nonprofit is still reviewing the AWWI’s study, but the organization strongly supports “properly sited wind power as a renewable energy source that helps reduce the threat posed to birds and people by climate change."

The AWWI’s report can be critiqued for concentrating on small birds and not including larger, endangered birds such as bald or golden eagles in the study (passerines accounted for 63 percent of the nearly 5,000 bird deaths observed at wind farms, while raptors made up 8 percent). But the AWWI said it plans to sponsor comprehensive studies of other bird species – including eagles and prairie birds – in the near future. Passerines are actually the largest order of birds and include half the world’s bird species – therefore, they deserve to be studied, too, and were a good place for scientists to start to analyze the effects of wind turbines on bird populations.

AWWI’s study is important in carrying on the conversation between proponents of clean energy and wildlife campaigners – because, at the most basic level, the two sides have the same goal: a planet that is safer and healthier for all living things.

Image credit: Flickr/Patrick Finnegan

Passionate about both writing and sustainability, Alexis Petru is freelance journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area whose work has appeared on Earth911, Huffington Post and Patch.com. Prior to working as a writer, she coordinated environmental programs for Bay Area cities and counties. Connect with Alexis on Twitter at @alexispetru

What could companies do better when it comes to diversity in the workplace, and how can we address the skills gap happening across certain industries like tech?

On Thursday, September 18th, TriplePundit addressed these issues as we hosted "Bridging the Workforce and Diversity Gaps" on Twitter at #diversity.

We engaged corporate responsibility thought leaders in conversation around affirmative action, gender gaps, transnational human rights issues, and much more.

Symantec panelists included: 

• Cecily Joseph, VP of Corporate Responsibility & Chief Diversity Officer at Symantec Corporation.


• Marian Merritt, Director of Cyber Education and Online Safety Programs for Symantec Corporation.

Guests participants included: 

• Meghan Ennes, Community Coordinator at the Shared Value Initiative.


• Susan McPherson, passionate cause marketer, angel investor, and corporate responsibility expert.

During the course of this hour-long chat, we reached over a million Twitter accounts and generated millions of Twitter impressions across the social media site! Just a few of your distinguished participants included Seth Leitman, David Connor, John Friedman, Milinda Martin, and Henk Campher.

Below is the Storify summary of the conversation on #diversity as it took place. For more information on Symantec's CSR program, feel free to reach out to Cecily Joseph or Marian Merritt via Twitter.

 Image Credit: George A. Spiva Center for the Arts

World famous rum maker Bacardi and the World Wildlife Fund are aiming to advance sugarcane standards in Fiji with a model sugarcane farm program.

The purpose of the initiative is to protect Fiji’s Great Sea Reef and tropical farmland. The Great Sea Reef is one of the largest reef systems in the world, supplying up to 80 percent of the domestic fish market.

The changes in farming that are part of the initiative include terracing and carefully distancing rows of sugarcane, which help control nutrient and seed runoff into the waterways that lead to the reef. WWF developed the model farms in Fiji.

The initiative helps protects both Fiji’s environment and its economy. Back in 2007, Bacardi started getting involved in sugarcane initiatives. “We saw sugarcane was in one of the important sectors for environmental, economic and social factors...sugarcane is important for rum development,” Dave Howson, global sustainability director for Bacardi, told me.

Bacardi ended up “being one of the founder companies” in the model farm initiative, Howson said. WWF was setting up a project in Fiji, which included the improvement of farming practices. “It was a great opportunity” for Bacardi, according to Howson.

Sugar is Fiji’s oldest industry, and it’s a “very small holder focused industry,” Howson explained. Before WWF’s sugarcane initiatives, farmers would grow sugarcane up to the water. The health and biodiversity of river systems and coastal areas is being affected by sugarcane farming, sedimentation from soil erosion and waste from sugarcane farming.

Beyond making a positive environmental impact, WWF has also helped sugarcane farmers. Sugarcane farmers are some of the poorest people in Fiji. A better sugarcane yield helps improve farmers’ lives. As Howson said, the higher the yield of the sugarcane, the higher the economic stakes. Education is also improving the lives of farmers and farm workers. A huge NGO like WWF can help out farmers, particularly when it partners with a company like Bacardi.

Bacardi sets the bar high when it comes to sourcing sustainable sugarcane, and the company influences other companies with its commitments. Bacardi pledged that by 2022, 100 percent of the sugarcane-derived products used for its rum will come from certified, sustainable sources. The pledge is the first of its kind in the industry. “We were the first company to set a time-bound commitment to sourcing sustainable sugarcane,” Howson said.

Bacardi also helped to establish Bonsucro, described as a global, multi-stakeholder nonprofit  initiative that improves economic, environmental and social conditions of sugarcane production around the world. The Bonsucro standards are the only ones focused on sugarcane. Almost 200 members from 27 countries are members of Bonsucro, and they represent various sectors of the supply chain. Bonsucro is mainly focused on Brazil and Australia. “There’s a lot of activity going on to spread the standard,” Howson said of Bonsucro. “It’s really creating a buzz. Sugar is extremely important to most of these companies.”

Image credit: Asian Development Bank via Flickr

By Phil Preston

Community engagement strategies are becoming more sophisticated and increasingly being used to drive financial returns. Knowing where to start can be tricky, so I’ve outlined eight entry points that you can use to kickstart your strategy process:

1. Purpose: Re-examine your mission and express it in terms of societal benefit

An Australian insurer expresses its purpose as “to help people manage risk and recover from the hardship of unexpected loss," which is a powerful way of thinking and more meaningful than “to be the outstanding competitor in our chosen markets…” Clarity of purpose provides a platform for new opportunities and builds resilience into the business model.

2. Positioning: Integrate your unique assets and strengths into your strategies

A local property developer includes social assets, such as schools, in its new residential releases. It has developed insight and understands how customers value these features. Learning how to identify and develop your assets, such as intellectual property, is the key.

3. Products: Harness social trends for product and market development

The aging membership base of a motoring organization led to the development of an online tool to help members maintain or improve their quality of life. It helps them cut through an overload of information in areas such as aged care advice, travel and volunteering opportunities. Tapping into societal trends assists product innovation.

4. Productivity: Identify social factors constraining your business

Chilean fruit exporter, Subsole, provides better access to healthcare for seasonal workers via mobile clinics and receives a 2.5x return on investment . Examining social factors in your workforce and supply chain can pay off.

5. Problems: A new lens for addressing business problems

A battery retailer engaged local schools and rolled out a household battery recycling program to help differentiate itself from competitors. It created a new channel to market, improved the value proposition for its customers and led to a dramatic increase in foot-traffic and sales growth. Applying a community or social lens can lead to business model and performance improvements.

6. Programs: Increase your return on existing or new community programs

I recently helped a local steel company create an innovation challenge for its emerging leaders. They are shoring up funds for two local charities and helping them find a more sustainable business model. It provides development opportunities that they wouldn't normally get in their workplace.

7. Performers: Help your high performers stay with you for longer

"James" was made a partner at his law firm, only to quit the following day to pursue his passion for a social cause. This risk could be mitigated by helping time-poor high performers make a difference in the world in the context of work demands. Instead of sending them on more ‘training,' the return on investment in personal support or coaching may be attractive.

8. People: Increase employee engagement for internal productivity

Determine whether there is a causal link between your corporate volunteering programs and employee engagement levels. Some fine tuning can make a world of difference. Companies such as IBM, Time Warner Cable and National Australia Bank offer paid volunteering leave and encourage skilled-based programs and strive to improve engagement outcomes.

The benefits of community engagement strategies haven't always been properly recognized. To start your own explorations, focus on the two or three approaches listed here that are most relevant to your present circumstances. Start collecting and facilitating views from employees and other stakeholders, with the ultimate aim of improving society and the returns to your business.

Which of these approaches provides the greatest opportunity for you?

Image credit: timlewisnm, Flickr

Phil Preston helps businesses devise community engagement strategies. He is based in Sydney, Australia, and can be contacted via phil@philpreston.co or followed on Twitter (@PhilPrestonTwit)

British supermarket giant Tesco has suspended four executives, including its UK managing director, after the retailer overstated its half-year profit guidance by £250m.

It has launched an investigation - headed by audit company Deloitte - and says it is working to establish the impact of the issue on its full-year results.

"We have uncovered a serious issue and responded accordingly," Tesco chief executive Dave Lewis told the BBC.

Commenting on the reporting error, Professor of Accounting at Warwick Business School Crawford Spence said: “This revelation should be interpreted as a sign of distress. Tesco has essentially tried to recognise revenue too early and delay the recording of costs until a later date. Accounting is not a hard science and some of this behaviour is acceptable, within limits. What Tesco appear to have done is push the boat out a bit too far, ending up with revenue that hadn't really been earned yet and costs that probably should have been booked earlier.

 “It is a classic 'earnings management' issue. Firms quite legitimately play around with their revenue and expenses all the time. However, when they do so aggressively, as Tesco appear to have done, this is usually because the firm is under pressure elsewhere. In Tesco's case, it has been losing market share to its competitors steadily in recent years and losing value quite dramatically in its share price in recent months. Rather than fix the underlying problems, they have been playing around with their numbers to try to make things look better.

“To Tesco’s credit, however, it has flagged this up internally and is doing something about it, which suggests that there are probably no other big accounting shocks hidden away.

“Given it this has been flagged up and dealt with internally it is unlikely any court proceedings will occur. Tesco could be fined by the authorities, but they will most likely wait to hear what the auditors, Deloitte, uncover first.”

Editor's Note: A version of this post was originally published on the EcoPlum blog.

By Gia Machlin

I was born in the '60s and often think about how crazy that decade was. President John F. Kennedy was killed when my mom was pregnant with me; our good family friend Andrew Goodman was killed in Mississippi right around my birth; Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy were both killed when I was 4. It must have seemed like the world was falling apart.

Yet the world changed in significant ways that decade, and many people gained rights and freedoms that allowed them to achieve what they only dreamed of at that time. Today, my family, colleagues and coworkers will be part of something HUGE – something so big that it is reminiscent of the groundswell that was the Civil Rights movement: the People’s Climate March here in New York City.

When you think about it, our rights to a clean and sustainable world are being denied by a powerful establishment that is fighting for the status quo with their billions of dollars. Today, we are taking to the streets and demanding our rights back!

Climate Change affects us all in different ways: If you live in a coastal area, you’ve no doubt been touched by flooding from rising sea levels. Our friends on the West Coast are experiencing unprecedented drought. In Nebraska, dirty tar sands from the Keystone XL pipeline could toxify the prairies, while in Virginia, mountaintop removal mining is contaminating watersheds. In Asia and Africa, serious conflicts could occur due to the rising number of climate refugees. Much less serious, but closer to home and more relatable by many of us, we are losing our snow and beloved winter recreation activities. I could go on and on.

Indeed, it feels like the world is falling apart, just like it did in the '60s. And just like we did before, we are taking to the streets to demand action. You may think comparing a global environmental crisis to the lack of civil rights in the U.S. is peculiar, and I don’t disagree. But the upshot is: The activism worked. We now have a president who, back when I was born, did not even have federally protected equal voting rights. Let’s make ourselves heard loud and clear, so that 50 years from now, we have a world that is better than it is now: A world where renewable energy is the norm; where the cost of environmental externalities must be accounted for by every government; and where our children will say, "I can’t believe they still drilled for oil when I was born."

Click here for more 3p coverage of the People's Climate March.

Image credit: People's Climate March. Click here for more shareable graphics.

Gia Machlin is president and CEO of EcoPlum.

This video is part of our ongoing coverage of SOCAP14.  To see the rest please visit our SOCAP 14 page here.

Marissa Feinberg is co-founder of Impact HUB New York, a co-working space founded on a social enterprise mission.  She also talks about how the HUB is structured and how HUB New York will interact with others in the network.

Marissa and her team will also be hosting us on October 2 for Stories & Beer with a focus on the intersection of water and the fashion industry.  RSVP here if you want to come by!

With a busy week behind you and the weekend within reach, there’s no shame in taking things a bit easy on Friday afternoon. With this in mind, every Friday TriplePundit will give you a fun, easy read on a topic you care about. So, take a break from those endless email threads, and spend five minutes catching up on the latest trends in sustainability and business.

On Sunday, more than 100,000 people and 1,400 businesses, schools and other organizations will take to the streets of New York City for the People's Climate March. It's being billed as "the largest climate march in history."

You've probably seen some details about the march buzzing around your favorite newsfeed, but in case there are any unanswered questions, we're here to help. To get you in the sign-waving mood, here are five things you need to know about the People's Climate March before it kicks off on Sunday.

1. Why they're marching

The core unifying slogan of the march is, "Action. Not Words." It seems fitting, as protesters plan to gather on Sunday with the aim of inspiring global leaders to take significant action to address climate change.

But, as Jenny Marienau of 350.org put it in a recent interview with the Bard Center for Environmental Policy, that isn't all the march is about. It's also an opportunity for solidarity among citizens and organizations that see climate action as a priority:

"The People’s Climate March was planned as a way to take advantage of that national stage to demonstrate the power of the climate movement," Marienau said. "We tried to bring together all of the different constituencies involved, to flex the climate movement’s muscle and let it see itself all together, marching in the street."

2. Who's participating

The march is expected to gather more than 100,000 people and 1,400 businesses and other groups. A number of celebrities, ranging from Prince Albert II of Monaco to actors like Willem Dafoe, Susan Sarandon and Brad Pitt, will also join the ranks at the march this weekend to show their support for climate action.

Much like the 'Occupy' protests, the People's Climate March has no sole organizer. Several different bodies collaborated on the march, including local New York-area community groups, international NGOs, grassroots networks, churches and faith organizations, and many more. (Click here for a full list of participating organizations.) Some, like Patagonia, are taking things a step further: The outdoor apparel company will close all of its New York City stores on Sunday in support of the march.

3. The timing isn't random

On Sunday, more than 100,000 people will take to the streets of New York City, but the timing of the march isn't random.

On Tuesday, Sept. 23, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is hosting a climate change summit for political leaders in New York City. It will be the most high-profile, global moment focused on climate change in years -- making this weekend the perfect opportunity for stakeholders to make their voices heard.

Next week's climate meeting is the beginning of a series of summits aimed at solving some of the world's most pressing challenges. In September 2015, politicians and delegates will reconvene in New York to agree on the definite to-do list for ending poverty worldwide - an impossible task without addressing climate change, which threatens essentials like water, food, shelter and safety, Climate March organizers say. A global action plan on climate change is then due in Paris three months later.

4. You can participate from all over the world

While the main mobilization will take place in New York, solidarity events are planned for more than 100 locations around the world. Even smaller events, designed to reinforce the global nature of concern, have sprung up in cities on every continent. Click here to find an event near you.

5. Or hitch a ride

If you'll be in the U.S. this weekend, you can likely hitch a ride to New York for the People's Climate March. Event organizers have compiled a list of available buses, trains, rideboards and creative group transit ideas for nearly every state in the nation. Click here to find resources near you. (You can also coordinate a bus in your community.)

6. This isn't the first event

The People's Climate March may have just popped up on your radar over the past few weeks, but mobilization started much earlier. Events kicked off on August 23 with a human chain in the Lausitz region, near the German-Polish border, to spur the energy revolution and a future without brown coal. Other events included Sweden Fossil Free Weekend the Pacific Climate Warrior Voyage, which aims to block the world's largest coal port.

7. You can still sign up to volunteer

Think it's too late to volunteer in New York this weekend? Fuhgettaboutit! The People's Climate March is still gladly accepting volunteers. If you live in the New York area, click here for more details about manning phone banks or volunteering on the day of the march. Please note that since things are bound to get hectic on march day, volunteers will need to attend a short training in advance (the last training is offered on Saturday, Sept. 20).

If you live outside the area, one of the best things you can do to help out is to organize a bus in your local neighborhood and invite friends and neighbors to take part. Click here for details about becoming a bus captain.

The People's Climate March will be largest unified gathering in support of climate change action to date. While one protest may not turn the tides, it's an unparralled opportunity for concerned citizens, businesses and other stakeholders to make their voices heard. So, gather up those megaphones and protest signs, and we'll see you at the march!

Image credit: People's Climate March. Click here for more shareable graphics.

Based in Philadelphia, Mary Mazzoni is a senior editor at TriplePundit. She is also a freelance journalist who frequently writes about sustainability, corporate social responsibility and clean tech. Her work has appeared in the Philadelphia Daily News, the Huffington Post, Sustainable Brands, Earth911 and the Daily Meal. You can follow her on Twitter @mary_mazzoni.